Les Etats du Maghreb face aux revendications berbères

Maghreb States and the Berber Demand, Maxime AIT KAKI For some thirty years, the Berber movement has been gaining ground in the Maghreb. It has moved beyond the national framework to become both a transnational and international phenomenon in the whole of North Africa. Its radicalisation over the past few years, particularly in Algeria, goes hand in hand with efforts of the powers that be to recover the situation — for example in Morocco - and the organising of the Berber diaspora, in France in particular. The case of Kabylie, which is on the verge of breaking with the Algerian central state and has discovered new cohésion and strength in traditional institutions (the archs), does not make it impossible to picture, in the long run, an upheaval of the status quo within Maghreb, in which twenty million Berbers reside. The Berber question puts several crucial choices in front of the North African states - i.e. identity, culture, and democratie legitimacy - on which the future of the region depends.